Home
by CantilenaCait
Summary: Six voices, a lifeline pulling him back, pulling him out of the dark. Six voices that are family. Six voices that are home. A short one-shot exploring family and love.


**Inspired by exhaustion and the Interstellar soundtrack. **

**This was originally going to be put in my 'Five Times Bones Looked After Jim' collection, but after I finished it I decided it didn't really fit there.**

**As always, reviews are welcome (but no flames please!)**

* * *

He's floating.

Weightless. Drifting in the dark, a thousand stars spinning endlessly around him, just like he'd always dreamed as a kid. Cold and bright and whispering promises of far-off worlds and adventures. Stars that promised home.

He feels like he's been here in the dark forever.

Time doesn't matter. Here it's just darkness and peace and wading through a sea of stars. Here it's calm.

Drifting, wandering, an adventurer lost in the skies.

Swirls of red spread across the black, splashes of colour. Of energy. Of life. Ethereal and barely there. Colours that call his name, desperate and pleading, trying to tear him away from peace, echoing across the silence. Colours that dance away from him every time he tries to reach them, leaving just the darkness.

He's floating.

The stars continue to spin, a myriad lights swirling around him, brittle and mesmerising. Comforting. Constant.

This is where he belongs. Away from everything but the dark and the light and the silence. Away from walls and famines and restrictions and expectations.

Here he's free.

Here he's home.

A voice again, a flash of red. Distant. Distraught.

Begging him to leave. To let go of the peace and comfort. To stop drifting.

He turns away.

* * *

McCoy scrubs his hand across his face.

A week. One goddamned week he's been lying there. Seven days since he slipped away. Seven days that no-one has been able to pull him back.

They've tried everything. Nothing works.

He's too firmly under the poison's influence, too far out of their reach.

The change on-board is tangible. The crew is silent, sombre. Waiting to hear the inevitable.

News travels fast on a starship.

The command crew are the worst hit. Most of them are in at least once a day, watching him lying on the bed or talking to him or asking McCoy for the five-hundredth time if he's absolutely certain there's nothing he can do, if he's absolutely sure that he's not missed something.

Saying yes is like a kick in the gut, because it feels like he's done the unthinkable. Like he's accepted his best friend's fate. Like he's accepted that the human manifestation of energy is going to end his days lying motionless on a bed, gradually waning while he stands by and does nothing.

It feel like he's given up.

He runs a hand through Kirk's hair, noting yet again how cold his skin is to the touch. He knows to expect it, and yet it's still a shock. At first, they'd tried to warm him up, covering him in blankets and raising the room temperature. It hadn't worked.

Nothing had worked.

He remembered getting the call from an irritable First Officer, reporting that Kirk was an hour late to duty and wasn't answering comm. calls. He'd sworn, loudly enough for Nurse Chapel to glance at him in concern, and stormed across the ship to the captain's quarters because Kirk was _never _late for duty unless there was something wrong.

He'd been right, of course.

He'd opened the door to Kirk's quarters (bless the lord for medical overrides) and stopped dead in his tracks.

Kirk was on his bed, motionless and pale, still in his uniform from the day before. He lay haphazardly on top of the covers, as though he'd barely made it to the bed before collapsing.

He'll never forget that moment, the awful seconds as he felt for a pulse, for anything, _anything _that would tell him Kirk was still alive and that his eyes were deceiving him.

He'll never forget feeling how cold Kirk was- _too much like he was already dead_\- and the panic that felt like it was going to wrap itself around him and consume him.

He'll never forget the litany of _god no please no he's too young this isn't meant to happen oh god oh god please don't leave don't leave me here alone please I can't lose you too oh god __**Jim**_ running through his mind, a constant stream of desperate thoughts, as he placed trembling fingers on Kirk's neck.

And then he'd felt it, that magical beat beneath his fingertips, and suddenly he was able to breathe again because Jim hadn't abandoned him, he was still there as he should be, and McCoy didn't think he'd ever been so relieved in his life.

But then there was nothing. Nothing for hours but that heartbeat, the only reassurance that Starfleet's youngest captain was still fighting.

Frankly, it had baffled them. McCoy had ordered every test and every scan imaginable, searching for some invisible sign that might explain what had happened. He'd worked feverishly, and each hour Kirk had grown colder, his breathing shallower, his face paler, slowly drifting away from them.

Hours turned into endless, sleepless days, until finally a blood scan revealed an unknown toxin. When Spock returned with an analysis of it, the last of McCoy's hope was destroyed.

There was no cure.

That was when reality hit, and McCoy despaired.

He spends his days sitting at Kirk's side, watching him. Talking to him. Trying to call him back with memories and pleas and threats. He can feel part of himself falling away, a deep ache in the spot where Jim had lodged himself so firmly, right in the middle of his chest. He knows when Jim goes, he'll never recover.

Spock barely leaves the labs, writing clear, neat notes in an attempt to discover the impossible, working through even the most illogical possibilities. He comes to see Kirk once a day, when he arrives for a report on the captain's situation and to present the results of his work- always unsuccessful. People think Vulcans don't feel, but McCoy looks at Spock and knows that that's not true. Not in the slightest.

Scotty arrives at 1700 hours on the dot every day to give Kirk his daily report. He chatters away about how the ship is running, the 'improvements' he's made to various bits and pieces, the incidents that have happened. He acts as though Kirk is still there, as though he's still listening. When he's done, he clasps a hand to Kirk's shoulder, bids him goodbye, and leaves.

Sulu never stays for long. He stands at the end of the bed, talking quietly about events on the bridge. By all accounts, he's been quiet for the past week.

Uhura sings to him, low and husky, singing songs from Earth alongside songs from countless planets, songs about family and love and home. She runs her fingers through his hair, and sometimes weeps.

Chekov doesn't visit for the first few days. When he finally does, he shuffles in. His curls are dishevelled, and he looks as though he has shrunk. When he sees Kirk, the colour drains from his face and he can't stop the tears. Nurse Chapel moves to console him, and Chekov clings to her, his eyes fixed unblinking on Kirk. Later, he sits with him and tells him stories of Russia, alternating between English and his mother tongue. Often his emotions overwhelm him, and he falls silent. He's too young.

The ship moves silently, crying out its grief to the stars.

* * *

He can feel himself falling apart, shrinking, fading. The darkness becomes heavier, weighing him down, but he doesn't fight it. The stars are brighter, and he feels that he could stay here in their light forever.

The stars are home.

They whisper to him constantly, murmurs of comfort and safety and peace. They fill him with a sense of contentment, like this is the place he's been searching for his entire life.

He is a wanderer, finally found.

Other voices still echo to him, six voices calling out to him, trying to persuade him to leave this place and to come back to them, wherever 'they' are. Sometimes he tries, but the darkness wraps itself round his feet and drags him back with promises of home and love and rest, and he stops struggling.

They're calling him again, explosions of violet and blue and red in the darkness. A maelstrom of hues, filling his world with flashes of warm light that contrast brilliantly with the cold stars. He wades closer to the voices, his feet sticking in the dark as though it were tar.

_Jim….Jim….come back…come back…Jim…..come back to us….to us….come home…_

A repeated litany, filled with pain and grief and longing.

A flash of red brushes his arm and he flinches back, a wave of emotions –_love friendship family home_\- smothering him and nearly knocking him off his feet. Momentarily he is bathed in warmth, and then the darkness returns with a vengeance, snuffing the light out. He cries out at the loss, struggling, fighting against the dark imprisoning him.

_Jim…come back…._

Another flash of light, this time purple. Music drifts through the air, a nostalgic melody singing of love and loss that makes him think of home and a group of people that he thinks might be family but he's not sure, and he fights even harder to reach out to it, to feel the warmth and love again.

His fingers brush the purple, and then he is surrounded by lights, and he is drowning and soaring and the cold that he hadn't realised was in his bones is burnt away by something stronger than the darkness, something that fills his veins with life. He hears the dark and the stars scream and howl in rage as he leaves them behind, flying high above.

* * *

'Come back to us, Jim. Come back to me. Please.'

'The ship needs her captain, Jim.'

'Ye need ta _fight_, lad. _Fight this_. Don't give in.'

'Please don't go.'

'Don't you _dare _leave us, not now, not after everything. You don't get to leave us here.'

'We need you.'

Six voices, a lifeline pulling him back, pulling him out of the dark.

Six voices that mean everything to him. Six voices that are light and warmth and love and belonging, that are late night conversations, and early morning cups of coffee, and a smile quickly passed in his direction.

Six voices that are family.

Six voices that are home.

He latches onto them, and soars.

* * *

**Oh my god, this is cheese-central. Oops. **


End file.
